Monday, January 9, 2012

The Cranky Divorcee: New Year, Same Attitude

It's been quite a while since I shared my advice for the lovelorn. Now that the holidays have passed, I'm back, ready and eager to guide the foolishly fictitious into making the right decisions in their love lives. But before I begin, I must identify the couples I last advised: the first question was about Mackie and Tate from The Replacement, by Brenda Yovanoff. The second question was about Remy and Dexter, of Sarah Dessen's This Lullaby. I will refrain from commenting on the unusual names that permeate YA fiction today.

Dear Cranky Divorcee,

I’m trying to convince my dead
husband that he was wrong about our insane son.
For years, I knew he was troubled—violent, cunning, and hateful. Now the whole world knows that I was
right. The awful things my son did might be my fault; they might not. I'll admit I hated my son, but he was impossible to love.
What I really want to know is how could I have kept my marriage from
falling apart? If I could go back in time, what could I do differently? I thought nothing could come between me and my husband, but as soon as he figured out I didn’t love our son, he turned
against me.

-Killer's mom

Your question is much more serious than the ones I usually address. You have
suffered. Your entire family has suffered. Everyone who has ever known anyone
in your family has suffered. But as I
learned more of your story, I was struck by how little evidence you gathered.
If you’re trying to convince your husband that your newborn literally cries all
day, record it! Haven’t you ever heard of a nanny cam? If you had confronted
your husband with indisputable evidence of your claims at the very beginning,
it might have made a difference to your relationship. Of course, he still might
have ignored you. Denial can be powerful enough to overcome visual and auditory
proof. You kept waiting and waiting for something to happen to convince your
husband that something was wrong with your son, but you never changed your
tactics. So, if you could turn back time, as the song goes, you should get
everything Kevin does documented.

You
could then have given your husband an ultimatum—we get our son professional
help (is there therapy for malevolent infants?) or I leave. The thing about
ultimatums is that you have to be prepared to follow through on them. I know
leaving sounds like a terrible thing to do, but without the weight of your
dislike warping him, your son might have turned out better. I’m terribly sorry I couldn’t give you more
uplifting advice. Sometimes there’s no
good solution.

Next: Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before. . .

Dear Cranky Divorcee,

I’m a female homicide
detective in NYC, and I’m great at my job. The guys at work can be a problem, but I’m
handling it. Even though I don’t want to admit it, my relationship’s becoming a
little bit of an issue. The problem is, my boyfriend is nice, hot, supports me
in my effort to quit smoking, has an adorable little boy and is crazy about me.
He comes with an insane ex, but I managed to get the upper hand on her and her
boyfriend. Now that I’ve got them in line, he’s starting to bore me a little
bit. There’s no challenge. There’s no drama. What do I do?

-Fedora

I
get questions like this all the time, Fedora, and they make me despair. Truly.
It’s as though people have someone good in their lives, and then they decide to
screw it up simply because it’s not screwed up already. I think there’s a term
for that: self-sabotage. Are you trying to punish yourself for your affair with
the higher-up who looks like a dying meth addict? (By the way, did that happen
before or during your current relationship? I know your medium doesn’t always
lend itself to back story).

You
have a great thing. You should work on getting the personal drama that you’re
hooked on in some other form than problematic guys, cheating, and avoiding your
boyfriend. Maybe you can pretend this self-destructive urge is your enemy, like
some of the other detectives, and work on winning it over. I’d recommend
therapy, but you can’t focus on your current therapist for the thirty seconds
it’d take to get hypnotized.

Yeah, I think I tipped my hand on the first one by using the character's name! Oy. You should read it; it's really good. I'd say I'll lend you my Kindle for PC copy, but I don't even know if that's a thing.

I think both the advisee characters and most of the people are around them are nutty.